Emily Mae Smith Arms the Broomstick at Petzel Gallery

Emily Mae Smith's broomsticks have taken up arms. At Petzel Gallery in Chelsea, her exhibition Transit of Venus, running through October 24, recasts the artist's signature anthropomorphic broom as an active, weapon-bearing figure — a striking reversal of the passive female nude that populates art history.

The show's title refers to the astronomical event when Venus passes between Earth and the Sun, appearing as a tiny dark spot against the solar disk. Smith builds her commentary on translucency from that alignment: what remains outside the spotlight, how long a painting takes to make, and what lies beneath a composed exterior.

That idea materializes most directly in "Venus (Inner Vision)" (2026). A broomstick figure stands contrapposto in a hazy wooded landscape, her handle rendered as if seen through an X-ray — veins and organs fully visible. The painting exposes what the figure's firm silhouette would otherwise conceal.

The exhibition does not run on brooms alone. Witch-like bunnies and grapes filled with eyeballs share the walls, linked by Smith's technical skill and by a darkness that haunts each canvas. A reviewer for Hyperallergic noted the strange coherence of this company, remarking on entering the show that Smith's voluptuous brooms now coexist with an unlikely cultural moment: the imminent release of the film Wicker.

Smith's central move is historical reframing. In "The Locust II" (2026), she reimagines Jules Joseph Lefebvre's "The Grasshopper" (1872) — a helpless, demure nude — now equipped with a scythe. In "Petite Muse at Work" (2026), she turns the male-artist-genius figure into a woman. Reframing art history is hardly a new gesture, but by casting a broomstick in these roles, Smith gives it particular force. A symbol of women's domestic work becomes a weapon, and the passive female figure becomes one capable of wielding power.

Transparency, in Smith's hands, also means multiplicity — seeing all sides of a subject at once. Her re-created Venuses, updated with new tools, argue that the historically helpless nude can be remade as an agent rather than an object.

Emily Mae Smith: Transit of Venus continues at Petzel Gallery, 520 West 25th Street in Manhattan, through October 24. The gallery organized the exhibition. For an artist long identified with a single recurring motif, the show suggests the broomstick still has new positions to take — and sharper instruments to hold.